The second problem was that the Department of Social Welfare . . . or whatever it was called in 1976 . . . had no category for artists. Ballagh had to sign on as an unemployed labourer.

Thirty years on, the landscape has changed. For Ballagh it has been 30 years of relentless work. He has designed 70 of our stamps, and the last version of our currency to be issued before the arrival of the euro. He produced portraits of Charlie Haughey, Noel Browne and Gerry Adams.

"He was well got with Haughey, " remembers a friend from that time. Most pleasingly, perhaps, Ballagh designed the set of Riverdance, that stalking horse of the new Ireland. He's on a continuing percentage from Riverdance, presumably bringing him a financial security he has never known.

As well as being involved in left wing politics, Ballagh has worked hard for the rights of artists. His pursuit of the Irish government, which has still not enforced the European law on droit de suite . . . allowing artists to profit from the re-sale of their work . . . has been dogged. Earlier this year he won his case against the Irish state on this very issue, and was awarded costs. For this Irish artists are severely in his debt.

But, as someone who was once friendly with him put it, "I doubt they'll be lining up to thank him."

"You've got to be motivated to be an artist, " says one of the many artists who know Ballagh. "You have to have an ego to be an artistf. You can't blame a guy for knowing how to make a buck." Ballagh was eager to demystify the role of the artist, insisting that artists are workers like any other: they need the money, they need the work. "He's always been a spokesperson. He was very important in the Artists' Association of Ireland, " says another.

Ballagh comes from a time when to be an artist in Ireland you had to be either independently wealthy or a lunatic: "The artist in crushed ****ing velour pants, " as one contemporary artist put it. It was Ballagh's generation that changed that stereotype. A skilled talker, a tireless grafter, a masterful handler of his own public relations, he became a modern artist in both senses of the term.

"Everyone wants to please their parents, " the same man says, "and he was successful pretty early".

The result of his efforts is, as another artist puts it: "He's one of the few artists in this country that people outside the art world can name. Louis Le Brocquy is the another one."

In February 2004 a Ballagh work 'In My Studio' earned 96,000 at auction in Dublin. It was taken to a businessman's home in France and will not, according to Pat Murphy, director of the RHA, be hanging in the retrospective exhibition next month. 'In My Studio', described as one of Ballagh's masterpieces, was painted in 1976, and shows a headline from the Irish Independent after Bloody Sunday.

"His work is illustrative, " says an artist colleague. "It's the artistic equivalent of one-liners."

Sometimes these one-liners are brilliant.

His portrait of Noel Browne, in the shape of a cross, with stones spilling out of the frame, is a brilliant illustration of a career, of a life and of a doom. But even his supporters acknowledge that Ballagh's work has not changed or developed as it might have been expected to. Time has caught up with the controversialist. "He's never changed his materials, " one says. "He's a very conservative artist."

This is a man who once put a selfportrait of himself, naked from the waist down, on to a kite and wanted to fly it over the Kilkenny Arts Week festivities. That was in 1978 and the good people of Kilkenny forbade it.

Ballagh's parents were middle class but with little cash. He grew up in Ballsbridge, in a rented flat. Ballagh was a lead guitarist with The Chessmen but had to learn his licks by heart. He moved to the bass (he later sold his bass to Phil Lynott). He was part of a group of artists, radicals and bohemians who drank in Toners pub in Baggot Street "before it became a Sunday Tribune pub, " says one man who met Ballagh there.

Around that time Ballagh met Michael Farrell, an artist who asked for his help on a project. Farrell became Ballagh's great friend and mentor, and they stayed close until Farrell's early death. "More eccentric, feckless, reckless than Bobby, " remembers the man who knew them both at that time.

"Bobby was none of those things. A year or two older than Bobby. Political too, though we all would have been."

During the Toners' years Ballagh was already with Betty, having met her for the first time when she was only 17. "The person Bobby hung around with was Betty, " says someone who knew the couple in the 1980s.

"They are amazing, " says an old friend.

"They're very different and they're incredibly loyal. She's a huge part of his life and not a public person. She's his main friend."

In the early days of the Artists' Association of Ireland, Betty Ballagh worked as its administrator. It was with Betty that Ballagh made his trips to Russia and Cuba.

"His republicanism became strong round about the H Blocks, " remembers one old leftie. "Up to then he would have seen himself as a socialist first and republican second. A lot of people made that shift at that time. I would have parted company with him then. He was with people who were very conservative socially . . . old-style nationalists."

Through the 1970s and 1980s Ballagh was one of the very few artists . . . indeed, people . . . in the South prepared to engage with the nightmare of the North. In his youth, like many jobbing musicians, he had played both Protestant and Catholic dancehalls there. One of his pictures commemorates the Miami Showband, some of whom were murdered on just such a journey. Perhaps, as the child of a mixed marriage (his father converted to Catholicism) sectarianism touched him in a different way.

In any event he travelled to the North regularly, and supported the West Belfast Festival long before it hit the headlines.

His involvement in organising the 75th anniversary of the 1916 Rising led to him complaining . . . he is a great complainer . . . about being followed by the Special Branch. "He had to change his phone number several times, " one man remembers.

"He's a team player, " says Pat Murphy of the RHA. "You can't say that about all artists." The retrospective will feature new work. "Every time I see him on Questions & Answers he seems aggrieved, " says an old friend. But it would be foolish to write off Robert Ballagh. As one man put it: "Remember a lot of artists start their best work, their most interesting work, in their sixties."

C.V.

Born: 22 September 1943. An only child.

Profession: Artist.

Education: St Michael's and Blackrock College, Dublin. Bolton Street College of Technology.

Married: To Betty Carabini in 1967. Two children, Rachel and Bruce. Recently became a grandfather.

In the news because: A retrospective exhibition of his work will open at the RHA in Dublin 15 September to 22 October.